Barrel (unit)
In the international oil market context, however, prices in United States dollars per barrel are commonly used, and the term is variously translated, often to derivations of the Latin / Germanic root fat (for example vat or Fass).
[1] In other commercial connections, barrel sizes such as beer keg volumes also are standardised in many countries.
Custom had made the 42 gallon watertight tierce a standard container for shipping eel, salmon, herring, molasses, wine, whale oil, and many other commodities in the English colonies by 1700.
[10] According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a standard barrel of oil is the amount of oil that would occupy a volume of exactly 1 barrel (158.99 L) at reference temperature and pressure conditions of 60 °F (15.6 °C) and 14.696 psi (1,013.25 hPa) (or 1 atm).
Oil companies that are publicly listed in the United States typically report their production using the unit multiples Mbbl (one thousand barrels) and MMbbl (one million barrels), derived from the Latin word "mille" and Roman Numeral M, meaning "thousand".
Due to the risk of confusion The Society of Petroleum Engineers recommends in their style guide that abbreviations or prefixes M or MM are not used for barrels of oil or barrel of oil equivalent, but rather that thousands, millions or billions are spelled out.
Some sources assert that "bbl" originated as a symbol for "blue barrels" delivered by Standard Oil in its early days.
However, while Ida Tarbell's 1904 Standard Oil Company history acknowledged the "holy blue barrel", the abbreviation "bbl" had been in use well before the 1859 birth of the U.S. petroleum industry.
Likewise, barrels per stream day (BSD or BPSD) is the quantity of oil product produced by a single refining unit during continuous operation for 24 hours.
For ease of trading, communication and financial accounting, international commodity exchanges often set a conversion factor for benchmark crude oils.
For instance the conversion factor set by the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) for Western Canadian Select (WCS) crude oil traded at Hardisty, Alberta, Canada is 6.29287 U.S. barrels per standard cubic metre,[18] despite the uncertainty in converting the volume for crude oil.
Production and consumption using this analogue is stated in barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed).
In the case of water-injection wells, in the United States it is common to refer to the injectivity rate in barrels of water per day (bwd).
In general, water injection rates will be stated in the same units as oil production rates, since the usual objective is to replace the volume of oil produced with a similar volume of water to maintain reservoir pressure.
They generally quote prices in Canadian dollars per cubic metre to other Canadian companies, but use US dollars per barrel in financial reports and press statements, making it appear to the outside world that they operate in barrels.
The 40 gallon whiskey barrel was the most common size used by early oil producers, since they were readily available at the time.
We, therefore, mutually agree and bind ourselves that from this date we will sell no crude by the barrel or package, but by the gallon only.
[23] The 42 gallon standard oil barrel was officially adopted by the Petroleum Producers Association in 1872 and by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1882.
[9] In modern times, many different types of oil, chemicals, and other products are transported in steel drums.
